A request: +1 Us for Google’s Sake

A week or so ago I found out about Google’s +1 program, which allows anybody to uprate websites that participate, so that users can boost that site’s search rankings.

As has been found recently, Google has staff of people who actively downrate websites based on a number of factors, one of which is according to reports, to downgrade sites that don’t agree with the “consensus” about AGW, or which allow for a diversity of views on the topic.

Because of this, WUWT’s google search rankings have become so repressed that you simply can’t find us when searching on terms like “global warming” or “climate change”. See below how search traffic has dropped as Google made changes:

Alexa search stats for WUWT - note the step changes

I am hoping that with active reader involvement in the +1 program, we can reverse this trend.

All you have to do is press the “+1” button at the bottom of any article you like (its down there with all the other ‘share’ buttons like twitter and facebook, etc.). Thanks for helping!

UDAPTE: 11/07/2011 345PM PST Some commenters suggest we aren’t being properly skeptical and have no basis for our concern. We do have a reference, this internal Google document:

I would recommend everyone dig up your favorite WUWT articles and +1 them. Then send a polite but firm email to google asking why they downrate sites that insist on the scientific method being followed.

I created a USA account from a hotel in Mexico. Account Created and verified.
But when I try the +1 button, it want to verify my account by calling a mobile phone!
I did not give them a mobile phone number and you betcha sweet-patooti I’m not going to!

Okay I joined even though I really do dislike Google and avoid them for a number of reasons! I voted once but double clicked it by accident. Don’t make that mistake or it takes your vote away.

Anthony, please watch the results very closely and let us know what happens. Also unless Google has changed there algorithm to some ridiculous extreme, we can all get you back up quite a bit by Googling “climate change”, finding you on the list and then selecting you on google directly! This used to have a fairly dramatic effect on rankings but who knows nowadays?

Google has put so much money in alternative energy technologies that they have to make it happen. They are certainly not net neutral as far as AGW is concern, even though they are promoting net neutrality for anything else. Obvious conflict of interest.

I switched to Bing a long time ago. For a while they were a little bit off in the results, but the algorithm is improving. I’m pretty sure microsoft is in it for the money as much as google is, but they are also less prone to such idiocy. A few months ago, Firefox recommended people stop using Google. Not as bad as Facebook, but real close.

By the way, I always get to WUWT through a search engine, rather than favourites.

Google has put so much money in alternative energy technologies that they have to make it happen.

Google uses a STAGGERING amount of energy. They like to put a pretty face in it with statements such as “One 60-watt bulb left running for three hours per user per month” or .18kWh per user. But that amounts to 2,260 megawatt-hours per year. That is more energy that some countries produce.

They are under great pressure to take advantage of “green” subsidy money and “carbon offset” incentives in order to obtain the power they need to operate their data centers. Most of their rhetoric is “greenwashing”.

Ok, did that. This ranking stuff is what it is. Something that resembles a game but that game can have real consequences. I run two blogs one dealing with science and one with photography. The Science one is not commercial at all. The photography one is commercial. I need to actively seek “likers” and +1ers. If anyone wants to help my rankings it would be appreciated just hit my name and all else is obvious. dennis

This political manoeuvre by Google is a complete disgrace. To fight back against this fraud, I, my wife, my Mother, our son, daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, the cat, a goldfish and the cockroach in the kitchen have all voted to upgrade WUWT +1. This is just the begining. If these looney lefties want war, they will get it!

Thanks everybody, I personally try not to hate on people, especially companies that tend to do what their marketing consultants tell them to do. The way to change a company’s behavior is to let them know how you feel. The +1 program helps us do it, and with enough of us, we can overcome the left coast bias, and wake Google up to the fact that there are a lot of us who insist on scientific integrity and unbiased search engines.

I’m sure I remember reading in someones blog several months ago about Google setting up a group of 21or 28 people to stealthily promote the AGW agenda. Is this true? It was bad enough when William Connelly edited/censored 5000+ articles at Wikipedia to promote AGW but for Google to take sides in anything just totally destroys their credability.

I’m sorry, I don’t like google. Years ago they seemed to be trying to take over my browser. I didn’t like that. I use Bing. I read somewhere recently that Bing is being taken over by google. Not good for the future of the net. :-(

I am a huge fan of this site, a confirmed skeptic, and, as it turns out, a Google employee. And I’m just dumbfounded that the readership here believes that there is any nefarious actjvity going on. This is as ridiculous as any internet insanity that I’ve seen (anti-vaccine sites, homeopathy sites, etc.) Sorry guys, but this is just conspiracist nonsense. Nobody is rigging search results… Sheesh.

“…As has been found recently, Google has staff of people who actively downrate websites…”
Can you provide a reference for this?
THanks

(I have an article thats been in draft here for quite a while about this, but we had decided it was best to not poke the animal. There are a number of mainstream media reports on this if you look for the info… – Mike Lorrey)

I have a google account, but only for things like uploading books and articles for free marketing, and for adwords and site stats. I never have had a google+ account, no will I (I hope). It allowed me (publicly, of course) to do the +1 thing.

eyesonu says:
November 6, 2011 at 10:09 pm
I just googled ‘global warming’ and the first couple of pages showed many results dated 2 – 3 years old. I need a new search engine! Recommendations?

All of the major search engines appear to be suppressing the search engine results for the principal Websites most effective at fostering uncensored debate of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), [Anthropogenic] Climate Change, et al conjecture.

http://www.yahoo.com
Wattsupwiththat currently appeared on page 26 of the search results for “Global Warming”.

ixquick.com
Wattsupwiththat currently appeared on page 24 of the search results for “Global Warming”.

I thought it would have been fairly common knowledge here that Al Gore has a prominent official role with Google. He is a board member or senior advisor or something.
I learned this soon after ClimateGate broke: you could type “climategat” and Google would not auto-complete “climategate.”
News of this tidbit of censorship had gone viral, I thought, after a few days, and the suppression of the regular auto-complete function was discintinued.
Now, as soon as you get to the “g” of climategate, it autocompletes. I am sure “climategate” was searched much more in those days than now.

Bing is worse. I searched for “global warming” and wattsupwiththat didn’t show up until page 75. Google has a massive conflict of interest. They charge for pay-per-click “adwords” but their search engine is supposed to find the best match for a search.

Similar results here, a google search on “climate change” first WUWT hit was on page 30, and the second WUWT hit was on page 57.

Congratulations Google you have successfully screwed up your algorithm, so completely it is returning the highest rated science blog on a relevant search until long past when normal people would stop paging through the results.

Translation — you have made your search results useless on this topic.

Unfortunately Bing does not do much better first hit on a climate change search for WUWT is page 29, second WUWT hit on page 46.

That said, I think it is important to note something about the listings that rank ahead of those first 2 listings on both search engines. It is obvious by visual examination that google puts a lot of weight on the search key appearing in either the URL or the title of the article cited, and or the first few lines of the first paragraph. It apparently does not weight the tags very significantly.

To rank better in the more generic search keys such as “global warming” “climate change” “green house effect” etc. It would be beneficial if some of those terms were included in article titles or the opening paragraph of articles.

To some extent the low ranking of WUWT on the most generic search keys might be a self inflicted wound due to the conversational, and sometimes “cute” titles given to many submissions.

I think you are being victimized by the very fact that you avoid those sensational “buzz words” which new comers might search for if they have questions about global warming etc.

(no I did not +1 as I will not give actively support google’s data mining of personal information)
Larry

I am another who distrusts Google, and I won’t voluntarily use Google to search. Curiously, the Google + button does not even appear here for me. I think I must have blocked it in my script blocker. Too bad, so sad. I use Dogpile, a search engine aggregater for my searches.

I am sure that Google is actively attempting to hide or discredit legitimate skeptic sites, but I also doubt that playing games of this nature will help much to counter their malfeasance.

I believe that Google suppresses AGW links. On the first page in a search for “global warming” all the links were to orthodox sites except in the category ‘Images for global warming – Report images”. Two of the images linked to neutral or AGW sites (even though the image was polar bear on ice …) I’m guessing this occurred because the censorship code doesn’t search deep enough.

No thanks, I don’t want google to know anything more than they have to as well as I all ready know what they are like there, another propaganda feeding site, so I don’t use thir search engine. I’ll use the old method of passing info on to friends and people I know and via E-Mail, discussion, work, over the phone, or from visiting other like websites with a link like you have here to other sites with the same view. That’s how I found out about your site. Plus it must put a nice taste in the mouths of the camps of the likes of RC, Al Gore and SS.com and the rest of them if the MSM and MS Web search engines directing traffic towards them still cant match the traffic you get here.

watts up with thathttp://www.desmogblog.com/directory/…/4385
Because it does indeed show what a dangerous place the Internet is for kids like me. Read more: Watts Up With the Internet? Motivated Bias on Climate Skeptic

I like this one as it accuses Anthony of not graduating at university. At least it didn’t accuse his maternal grandmother of having webbed feet.

FFS, number 200 on the “Global warming” search was a “Global Warming Mug” from the “Unemployed Philosophers Guild” (link deliberately omitted) –

“When you pour in hot liquid, the mug shows what will happen when the Polar Ice Caps melt – Before your very eyes, coastlines shrink and ocean levels rise, Florida dissolves and Central America all but vanishes.”

Dare I say that one can see why these “philosophers” are, deservedly, unemployed.

Google are evil. Period. I’m beginning to wonder about even using Scroogle, since that is still giving this biased, lying service a degree of credibility.

I understand the desire to get your fair share of google. But I, like many, if not most, stumbled upon your site via a link from elswhere while trying to find out what the hell was going on with this climate-change thing. Anyone who is concerned with the subject will find you, I guarantee it!
You do not need google, and you do NOT need to play their stupid games.

The “+1” button will not probably help much, as for “Global Warming” most of the results include it in the title.

Other SEO techniques would certainly help also. I’ve noticed now, for instance, that you don’t use the keywords metatag. Although discussed if Google really uses it, it is one of the most oldest techniques used in SEO.

Um, I’m in the group that got a ‘give us your information and open an account if you want to do this’ nag form from Google….

So what this says is that their priority program will be biased by folks who are naive enough to hand over buckets of personal information to a company that wants to exploit them. Nice simple way to remove thinking skeptical cautious folks from the ranking pool…

So no, I’ll not be hitting the +1 button as I’ll not be feeding Google my information.

BUT, thanks for letting me experience their automated select for the naive filter for myself. Now I KNOW their results will be horribly biased… and why… No one with a healthy sense of privacy and skepticism about corporate morals will ever be in their pool…

CE says:
November 6, 2011 at 11:05 pm
I am a huge fan of this site, a confirmed skeptic, and, as it turns out, a Google employee. And I’m just dumbfounded that the readership here believes that there is any nefarious actjvity going on. This is as ridiculous as any internet insanity that I’ve seen (anti-vaccine sites, homeopathy sites, etc.) Sorry guys, but this is just conspiracist nonsense. Nobody is rigging search results… Sheesh.

You write, “Nobody is rigging search results…”. Unfortunately, Google has announced it definitely demotes Websites for a number of different reasons. Demoting a search engine result is “rigging search results, ” for the purpose of reducing “low quality websites and a variety of other websites as described by Google. Given this overt demoting of website search results, users can be forgiven when they become concerned about just which websites may and may not run afoul of Google’s choices of websites to demote, overtly or covertly.

Google lost a European Union lawsuit in which it was decided that Google demoted or rigged search results leading users to a European search engine competitor. Add to all of that the way in which WUWT has web traffic documented to be very substantially greater than the other websites appearing much earlier in the Google search results, is it any wonder there would be some concern about Google and other major search engines including WUWT among the websites they demote in the search rankings for political reasons represented as other reasons?

Despicable, completely and utterly despicable behaviour from Google. They cornered the market in web search, pretending to be neutral and to have an algorithm which ranks pages based on non-political factors – but now that they are a monopoly on searches, they are showing their true colours. Google is part of the machine. Google is dangerous. Very, Very, dangerous.

You are the pot calling the kettle black here. On your 911 memorial page you banned any comments questioning the official version of events which is so full of holes you could strain your vegetables through it. You don’t like censorship – unless it is you who is doing it!

[REPLY: the WUWT site policy is located here. Read it. Note, too, the section about “grousing about policy”. Further comments along this line will be discarded. -REP]

I’m sorry CE but I don’t believe you. Google has been caught out censoring climate searches way back just after Climategate. Why would you stop now?
Please read everything at this link, and get back to WUWT with your response.

earlier this year, when google dropped “search within results” (SWR) , which was its only really unique feature, people – especially those doing online research – complained long and hard, and requested it be restored urgently. google came out with a response that was an insult to those of us who used SWR CONSTANTLY AND SUCCESSFULLY and knew that google were not telling the truth:

Google Support Forum: Kelly F, Google Employee, Search Community Manager:
Search within results link: gone but still alive
Hello Web Searchers,
As you may have noticed, the Search within results link no longer appears at the bottom of your search results page. Right now you might be thinking, ‘What? No way! How am I going to narrow down my results now that it’s gone?’ Well have no fear – I’ve got a little secret for you: when you used to click on the Search within results link and type in additional search terms, you weren’t actually searching within your previous list of results. In reality, your new search terms were simply added on to your original entry and then another search was performed. We’ve eliminated that extra step you used to take to modify your results…
Please let me know if you have any questions about how this link used to work and how you can get your desired results…http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=49060b0b57fe65fc&hl=en

as u will see from the multiple pages of responses to Kelly F, people just wanted SWR back, but google ignored us all. what i can say is searching on google has been far less effective since SWR was removed. simple. equally, google could have just restored the function. simple.

like so many who have commented, i would not give google my details in order to use the +1 feature, and i only use google for searching nowadays because i still get more results than on other search engines.

Well don’t post my comment I really don’t care, but I’ll still check out this site like I always do. SNIP me if you want for what ever reason you want, it doesn’t matter. I don’t buy this AGW BS and it stinksjust as much as real BS as far as I am concerned. But it’s your site and your call, and you got nothing more to gain from me other than my support here, and you’re gona get that anyway. CHIMO!

I am a former librarian who worked in a university. Suppose I had deliberately made it more difficult for the academics and students to find books advocating views I disagreed with. I would have been sacked!

Why should the bosses of Google get away with doing what amounts to the same thing?

This is an interesting development in the ‘struggle’ (for struggle it is) to dislodge the Warmist Tendency from the highest positions of power.
There is an ‘elite’, that’s how they see themselves and they quite simply know better than us. They’ve long since committed themselves fully and openly to Warmism…to climb down would be require a degree of humility which I suspect they do not posess.

Just to see, I went to Yahoo and looked for “Climate Change”. No WUWT on first 15 pages.
I looked for “Global Warming”, same result.
Looked for Global Warming Blogs and WUWT on page 4.
I went to Google, looked for Global warming blogs and WUWT on page 2.
Don’t know what that proves, though, and I’m still not going to give Google all the stuff they want for an account.

stoped using google a long time ago (now bing), but I do tell as many people as I can about WUWT, the telling stat is the site hit rate, search by google may be down but whats the direct visitor count.
And
perhaps you would hope that the google search may go down over time, as once a person has found WUWT they might just save it as a bookmark so no repeat search , and there is a finite number of `searchers` around the world.
I`ll have to check out how to find google again and see if I can help
regards

Likewise – I don’t use Google as a search engine. I am usually disappointed by the misleading results. Don’t want to touch it.
Word to those who use Google maps to navigate – don’t – it will get you lost.
I use Alta Vista – puts WUWT at the top of the list.

When you are in the business of providing web sites for business customers, unfortunately you have to play the Google game as, like it or not, appearance on Google is the yardstick by which you are measured.

And as far as I’m concerned clicking the +1 button is just that: playing the Google game. The only information they required of me is e-mail and gender (why is gender so important to them?), both of which are available to anyone who cares to check.

Another way to assist in WUWT ranking is to place links to WUWT in any web site you operate if possible.

I try never to use Google. It is actions like this that make me realise why I do not trust them. There is a good case to suggest that all those that believe in freedom and liberty should boycott the Google search engine.

I do not use Google for a number of reasons, not least their support for the Google exec. who helped engineer the revolution in Egypt and their partnership with the NSA.

For Google-type searches I use Bing. If I really want some comfort that my personal details are not being stored and shared I will use duckduckgo.com.

Having said that I tried ‘climate fail’ and ‘climategate’ on Google and Bing and WUWT showed on the first page both times, so I don’t think there is proactive censorship at this level. You do however have to go a long way down to find anything in the least bit contrary to the mainstream consensus if you search for ‘global warming’. This may just be that the ‘system’ may be more professional at optimising their rankings.

@CE – It looks to me like there’s been a change in the ranking algorithm again. But Google is so secretive that it’s impossible to tell. I know of one technical book reviews site (www.techbookreport.com) that has seen it’s traffic cut by two thirds over-night. Google opens itself to all kinds of accusations because of the secrecy, and also the deep connections to warmist orthodoxy.

Speaking of big brother, this has to be one of the most ironic moments in socialism’s history.

Or more accurately, this is big brother’s little brother speaking.

Quote from Castro’ brother:

“The state has no business getting involved in a matter between two individuals,” Mr. Castro told the National Assembly last December, criticizing complex rules and “irrational prohibitions” that he said bred corruption.

“If I have a little car,” he added, “I have the right to sell it to whomever I want.”

First of all, I have to say I don’t “hate” Google, I use some of their other products and most are very useful for me, but this Google+ thing at the moment is not for me at all, it behaved too aggressive and it was disruptive, I tried to give a rating on a post in Google reader and it asked me to sign up (fair enough I played along) 10 minutes later I realized that I had just integrated my Google account to an advanced data miner, tracker and advertising system, in the old days we’d call these systems malware and now they are called social networks, even when I refused to add any friends from a selection including Brittany Spears to follow, a pop up window appeared saying “you will be lonely without friends on Google+”, lol ‘Yeah Right on, where’s the delete button!’. I just don’t rate any articles now on Google. problem solved.
If Google keeps on the way they are going I can see them losing a lot of business, especially as other competing search engines that are continuing to evolve. 7 years ago I wrote my own web browser it had 100 search engines and the most useful sites built into it, it also had a meta search engine and a result blocker that would not retrieve any results from selected websites or domains, it also had a cool AI module that had built in STT (Speech to Text) and TTS (Text To Speech) and packed with tons of other light non-evasive features, then the apartment that I lived in at the time was burgled and it was all stolen, years of work 10’s of thousands worth of equipment and software including my fender Stratocaster, (If there are any Burglars reading this! YOU DO NOT STEAL A GUY’S GUITAR that’s just cruel) I haven’t got round to building another custom browser because I know the amount of time and effort it would take, anyway search control along with every other ability will probably be phased out over the next 5-10 years and what we will be left with will be an advanced global mainstream media outlet and it comes with all the frills, just look at your TV set and imagine a selection of celebrity blogs and science corespondents such as Richard Black of the bbc or dominant environmental groups such as the WWF and greenpeace to choose from, every other voice or piece of Information will be extremely hard to find. Convenience is used as a bait and it’s a great way to trap people, Welcome to the Spider Web! Mwahahahaha! Don’t have nightmares!.
And no, sorry, I’ll not be encouraging Google’s BAD behaviour by using every new gimmick they release.

“As has been found recently, Google has staff of people who actively downrate websites based on a number of factors, one of which is according to reports, to downgrade sites that don’t agree with the “consensus” about AGW, or which allow for a diversity of views on the topic.”

Please substantiate this claim.

Also, wuwt isn’t on the first page of results for “global warming” on bing either. Is Bing actively censoring skeptical viewpoints? Doesn’t appear to be, the article “Why I remain a global warming skeptic” from the Wall Street Journal is on the first page of results.

Perhaps you will have to pay for an add on “Global Warming” which will give a listing at the top of the page. But then they will probably say you are being funded by big oil and big coal.

It does help if you have “Global Warming” or “Sceptic” or “Climate Sceptic” in your name. That may be the reason scepticalscience.com chose that name in addition of course to wishing to lure curious but naive people wanting to find what the sceptical arguments are, only to be subverted by a barrage of half truths. When I set up my present business, I intentionally chose the product group as my company name to gain a competitive advantage on search engines. Perhaps you could set up a new site with a more relevant name and redirect people to WUWT or even publish WUWT on a sister site.

Thomas W. McCord on November 6, 2011 at 9:39 pm said:
I will stop using Google as I can no longer trust them!
————
This kind pf stuff is a bit weird since Google has apparently been tweaking your search results based in your personal previous searches.

In other words right wing fruit loops are delivered results of interest to right wing fruit loops and left wing fruit loops are delivered results of interest to left wing fruit loops.

This of course amplifies already existing problems with confirmation bias and the entrenchment of blind prejudice. This is considered to be a bad thing. People are trying to convince Google not to do this.

I think the chances of Google downgrading a sites PageRank (or whatever they use these days) simply because they have a certain political slant is highly unlikely. Why would they? How can it possibly benefit Google as a business?

No. Whats much more likely is that WUWT is employing SEO techniques in their HTML/scripts/whatever that is triggering an automatic adjustment by Google in an attempt to return a more “natural” PageRank.

The gender is open.
Try using “other”
Have a different nickname, if your name is “Peter” use a nickname such as “Jill”
Change your “real” name to a more socially useful name, such as Osama Binbag..
Play the game !

“I think the chances of Google downgrading a sites PageRank (or whatever they use these days) simply because they have a certain political slant is highly unlikely. Why would they? How can it possibly benefit Google as a business?”

Who ever said rational thought had anything to do with belief in the global warming religion?

Anthony: Your complaint with Google might be legitimate, but you need to make a better case. As far as I can see, the main thing Google does is to find matches between words in the search argument and words in web pages. (Without that, it wouldn’t even work.) I suspect it also looks at synonyms. No doubt, it does other things as well, but you need evidence of what they are.

Isn’t it possible that WattsUpWithThat has used the phrase “global warming” less frequently in the recent past, especially in the main articles, as opposed to the comments threads? One thing I’ve noticed about Google is that it’s better at noticing words and phrases that are prominent on a page, or nearer the top of page.

Most of the commenters here seem to think that word and phrase matching is not basic to what Google does. That’s a really weird idea.

I just now Googled “solar geomagnetic activity,” and the first three hits were to WattsUpWithThat.

If you do a targeted search with the following exact entry:
+”people who actively downrate websites”

You only get 3 hits 2 of which are WUWT. That phrase appears in the second sentence of this thread, and is unique enough to not appear in almost any other web document.

To increase your google ranking legitimately without trying to game their algorithm you need to include key generic phrases like “global warming” in the titles and opening paragraphs of some of your posts. Google does other things to rank web sites like reciprocal links, but first and foremost it depends on the search key appearing in the web URL or the top few lines of the web page.

I switched to Bing a long time ago. For a while they were a little bit off in the results, but the algorithm is improving. I’m pretty sure microsoft is in it for the money as much as google is, but they are also less prone to such idiocy.
By the way, I always get to WUWT through a search engine, rather than favourites.
========================================================================
I also enter most websites through a search engine also (swagbucks)
microsoft/bing was caught “borrowing” Google’s search results a while ago, so that is why the Bing algorithm may be improving !!

Google???
I trust them little and avoid their products/services as much as I can !!

when I reloaded my pc I also did not load Gearth or search or chrome.
was wild to find acrobat wanted me to accept chrome to upload so refused that also.
they admitted to knocking out collation? sites also a while back.
they suck and I wont support or use them.
I use Ixquick for privacy and for fairly good results.

No matter google’s single minded vested interest in hashish technology all the while being powered by coal all the while being able to afford latest nuclear ways of boiling water, but you probably still need to use their guidelines when it comes to meta descriptions about your site and your pages.

The +1 button does not even appear with the browser security settings I normally use with Internet Explorer. It shows up if I lower the settings but then so too do all those annoying Google interstitial ads.

“In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on “File a Complaint Online,” call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:

Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580 ”

Now, I wonder if the FTC consider what Google is doing comes under the ” deceptive or unfair business practices”? It would be interesting to finf out if the “Gods” at Google are breaking the rules. I am sure there must be a legal eagle who visits this site that can offer advice on this.

Those of you who fear Google’s accumulation of personal knowledge might consider my approach: disinformation. According to Google, I am a retired admiral from the British Navy and a field paleoanthropologist specializing in skullduggery. I also change sex frequently, and my birthdate tends to change more than most. Unfortunately, they do have surprisingly accurate notions of my restaurant interests around my neighborhood. I should do something about that. I have, however, uploaded numerous photos I’ve taken and tagged random strangers with my name. Depending on where you look, I might be female, male, black, white, or Hispanic.

I took up this little hobby when Google+ came along and insisted that I couldn’t use the “handle”, “nickname”, “pseudonym” that I’ve been using online since 1987. Their obsession with “real names” rubbed me entirely the wrong way. Where would Hamilton and Madison have been if they couldn’t fall back on “Publius”? I’d planned to abandon the practice after Google relented and allowed pseudonyms, but I think even then I’ll want them left in the dark.

If enough people did this, those wonderful databases they build and sell would be rendered untrustworthy and useless except in the aggregate.

When I was running a popular wordpress blog that had high Google search rank we occasionally had problems such as this. One time a malicious website had somehow inserted an invisible link into our main page and that set off a big red flag with google. Another time an arch enemy created a website that mirrored all our articles and comments and had all their many users read that site instead of ours to deprive us of the traffic and insure that any deleted comments from banned users would be archived on their mirror. That tripped something in google where they thought it was us spamming our own content. I had our lawyer send the owner of the other website a cease and desist letter about copying our content.

But search for Googlegate and you’ll also see that more than money is at stake. The accusations against Google of censorship are wide-spread, involving schemes to elect Barack Obama, attacks on Christianity (key in “Christianity is” and Google will suggest unflattering completions to the phrase), and political correctness (key in “Islam is” and nothing negative is suggested).

It looks like Google is also killing the Japanese satellite finding, showing that industrialized nations are among the lowest emitters of CO2. Definitely not something the IPCC, WWF, and REDD want released to the public.

http://climaterealists.com/?id=8588
How right he was! It appears a self-serving and influential clique of zealots, fearful that the story may go viral, is desperate to kill it. This morning my Suite101 article had already gotten over 400,000 crosslinks a mere two days after publication. This evening a Google search shows that number cut to 297,000; so much for free speech and easy access to information on the Internet.

http://climaterealists.com/?id=8588
Posted by Joe Olson (forum) on Nov 2nd 2011, 11:41 AM EDT
In May of 2010 America’s fearless leader held a two hour emergency meeting with the CEO of Google…topic controlling the blogosphere. Turns out the the SERFS of the world were getting information that was “beyond their need to know” and access must be restricted. Then Barry stepped into the Rose Garden and the teleprompter said….

“Too much information is DANGEROUS for our democracy”….[google this phrase]

That night +18,000 conservative websites were shut down, but they also managed to find and close 100 Jihadists sites with detailed instructions on how to construct dangerous bombs with common household chemicals….therefore all this was ‘national security’.

Here in Taiwan searching “Climate change” with (English not Chinese!) Google, I got NO results for “wattsupwiththat”in the Find box. And then the search stops! Google finally tells me:
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 955 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

Perhaps you are in the omitted results, but I wouldn’t count on it, and I have no desire to try again. What struck me though is that most of the results have the word “climate change” in the page title. Besides strong Google BIAS, you might want to change some of your page titles and put that term in! Google in my experience goes a lot by page titles.
Also I noticed that Asians–not just through Google–get thrown off by biased results, as Asians are better “followers” and it’s where the money is, and the NWO and their several hobby horses are quite strongly represented in the local media. Like the “China Post” English newspaper here is fanatically “Warmista” as well as promoting Vaccinations (drug industry) to the hilt, etc. etc.

O…M…G – Video explodes skeptical kids in bloodbath | Watts Up …
wattsupwiththat.com/…/o-m-g-video-explodes-skeptical-kids-in-bloo…Cached – Similar
You +1’d this publicly. Undo
Sep 30, 2010 – I think it time for all CAGW sceptics to come out of the closet and tell the …. I point out that climate has been changing for 4 billion years and …

Well, Anthony, it seems you need to go a bit on the attack in naming your pages differently, at least, and give Google a piece of your mind. I guess if we look for scientific terms re: climate and warming you may come up sooner, but as far as reasing the masses with “truth” or climate reality, you need to get on the ball. If THAT is what you want to do!

The system doesn’t play fair. All the last search results were peppered with fraudulent China Post results, for example, whereas your honest science was nowhere to be found until page 28! It’s like this, you can just be an honest scientist and forget the propaganda? You’ll be like a pretty girl winking in the dark! Or you can start to attack to get your ratings up and reach the bamboozled world masses with REAL science. As it stands now, your enemies control the playing field. But hey! Truth never makes it far in this wicked world. Look at the most loving man that ever lived! He is still cursed, persecuted, denounced, mocked, derided and debunked after 2000 years….. just for dying for our salvation!
So, ANY truth is treated like that. Still you can wage a better campaign than you are, obviously.
Good luck?
Nah! God bless!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

Originally, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress. However, starting with Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), the Supreme Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies the First Amendment to each state, including any local government.

As much as I am loathe to admit it, lazy teenager is largely correct. Everyone’s searches are skewed by their own history of what sort of result they choose to click on when searching. If you are a skeptic and routinely choose skeptic sites from the results then skeptic sites show up higher. Likewise for alarmists I’ll bet, although I wouldn’t know — I no longer have the patience to endure such idiocy. Confirmation bias is rampant in our society and I am as guilty of it as anyone on “the other side”. I would not be surprised to discover that google is acting like just about every other marketing scam out there and messing with the results for various reasons. That sort of commercial/idealogical gerrymandering goes on everywhere these days — especially in media — and It won’t be going away anytime soon.

It is a strange and increasingly difficult game that we all have to play in separating the wheat from the chaff in our daily lives. It was Benjamin Franklin who once said: “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” In this case that should read; people willing to trade their freedom for the sake of convenience deserve neither and will lose both. But that is the insidious nature of the mass-marketing society we live in. Most of our neighbors will choose to take the easy way out and that is the weapon of choice being used by those who seek to destroy capitalism — and by extension, freedom — the same folks that are driving the global warming agenda. But I will +1 whenever I get the chance. Just another task to add to an ever increasing list of things to do in this endless battle for my chosen way of life.

You likely have your security settings set very high, or are using NoScript, like me. I allow anything running on this site, but then again I don’t run windows for surfing the net so I don’t have to worry so much about malicious scripts. Perhaps you do? Regardless, if you want to participate — or even see the whole sordid business — you need to “lower your shields”.

I’m afraid you are barking up the wrong tree on so many fronts with this. I am a professional SEO and online marekteer, so I know what rankings are about.

For a start you are looking at Alexa rank data, which is linked to the Alexa toolbar and has nothing to do with Google.

Secondly, its about keywords, relevance and trust. So for example, if I search for “arctic sea ice news”, I get NSIDC top of the SERP, and then your sea ice page second. So WUWT does rank as a trusted authority page for specific search terms.

Thirdly, no matter what you do on page, more than 60% of what ranks you is LINKS. If you want to rank for “global warming” you need about a gazillion inbound links containing that term or a linked term within the links anchort text. I bet most links to WUWT are “WUWT” or similar, so again you perhaps do not build page relevance from incoming links.

Lastly, Google +1 is a voting button for Google circles. It has nothing to do with their organic search results. It is their attempt at facebook “likes”, or Stumblepon stumbles, or diggs. Clicking on +1 will NOT effect your organic SERP positions.

If people want to get WUWT ranking for general terms such as “global warming scepticism” then you need to link to WUWT from your blogs and sites using the link anchor text “global warming scepticism” or something similar. Its no surprise that another “authority” site, skeptical science, ranks one for that search term, as the word is in the site title (in variation) and they have specific pages addressing the topic which contain the term, and you can bet the people linking to it are linking using terms like “read how to anwser a global warming sceptic” which builds page relevance.

http://climaterealists.com/?id=8588
Posted by Joe Olson (forum) on Nov 2nd 2011, 11:41 AM EDT
In May of 2010 America’s fearless leader held a two hour emergency meeting with the CEO of Google…topic controlling the blogosphere. Turns out the the SERFS of the world were getting information that was “beyond their need to know” and access must be restricted. Then Barry stepped into the Rose Garden and the teleprompter said….

“Too much information is DANGEROUS for our democracy”….[google this phrase]….
______________________

WOW, Google returns the ABSOLUTELY HUGE number of wait for it…. five

New … – Climate Change Dispatch – Because the debate is not overhttp://www.climatechangedispatch.com/…/9534-new-satellite-data-contradi…Cached
You +1’d this publicly. Undo
Oct 30, 2011 – “Too much information is DANGEROUS for our democracy”….[google this phrase] That night +18000 conservative websites were shut down, …
#
[PDF]Green Energy Neverland, Ver 2.0http://www.fauxscienceslayer.com/pdf/Green_Energy_Neverland.pdf
You +1’d this publicly. Undo
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Oct 28, 2011 – the teleprompter said “Too much information is dangerous for our democracy”. He repeated that phrase at commencement speeches several …
#Scopes Trial for Warmist Monkey
slayingtheskydragon.com/de/…/176-scopes-trial-for-warmist-monkeyCached
You +1’d this publicly. Undo
Announced as the “Too Much Information Is Dangerous For Our Democracy” plan, they quickly ‘resized the web’ and over 199000 of the Monk links were lost. …
#First geothermal energy map of the USA now in Google | Watts Up …
wattsupwiththat.com/…/first-geothermal-energy-map-of-the-us-now-i…Cached
You +1’d this publicly. Undo
Oct 26, 2011 – In the words of our fearless leader, “Too much information is dangerous for our democracy”. Pity, for it would take our GREATEST minds with …
#John O’Sullivan: Popular Skeptic Writer Fired for Exposing Carbon …
climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8588&linkbox=true…6Cached
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4 days ago – “Too much information is DANGEROUS for our democracy”….[google this phrase] That night +18000 conservative websites were shut down, …

I don’t think searching for “global warming” is a good test case for trying to find WUWT.

Also, if WUWT is not making use of tags and other standard marketing tricks that sites use to get higher rankings, then it only stands to reason that WUWT would be lower than some other sites. There are companies/consultants whose whole business is helping websites get higher rankings — there are lots of tricks of the trade and it has nothing to do with battling back against a conspiracy.

Is there any documented evidence that Google is downrating sites that don’t tow the CAGW line, or is it just suspicion? I would think documented evidence would be quite a story.

I;m conflicted. I have a niece who took our advice and joined google several years back, after graduating from The Farm. Still with them, doing well. Yet I also like the evil empire called EXXON enough to trust a large part of my retirement to their stock and so I do get paid by Big Oil in the form of rather miserly dividends from time to time.

Recently, I had to buy a new computer after the last one fell into the ocean, strictly my fault. The new one wanted to load Bing, so now I use Bing not by choice but by convienence,

My old college roommate has a daughter who works for GISS, spending time in Greenland and Antarctica most recently.

However I refuse to give them my real name (simply put – I don’t trust them), so I made one up based on my web moniker “wermet”. Say hello to W Ermet! :) I also established a new email address for myself so they wouldn’t have that either.

So, to all those who don’t want to give Google their personal info, this is how it’s done.

In all honesty the way Wattsupwiththat is treated by google is symptomatic of how google is no longer a search engine. It is an organization with far too much control and it is now run by humans with agendas rather than being truly algorithmic.

WUWT is a blog – a popular blog but still a blog. If you Google “climate change” it is unlikely that you would get WUWT in the first few hits because other sites (Wikipedia, major news outlets, government agencies) have more links to their pages on other sites than WUWT does.
If, however, you Google “climate change” but select “blogs” from the sidebar then WUWT will appear in the first few hits.
Not an evil conspiracy – just use common sense.

When I first began investigating AGW claims using google search engines, I noticed a frustrating repression of skeptical sites. I assumed, everyone else, experienced the same, and was well aware, of the difficulty. GK

1. https://www.ixquick.com/
2. https://duckduckgo.com/
The above search engines claim to actively promote user privacy by:
• Not recording IP addresses that identify the user
• Not using tracking cookies to make a record of search terms
• Offering encrypted versions that do not route search terms to sites that can identify the user.

Don’t whine too hard if Google chooses to blacklist you for attempting to ‘game’ the search rankings. After all: It is right there in their TOS.

REPLY: I don’t think you interpreted the Google TOS correctly, it says:

Publishers may not direct users to click the +1 Button for purposes of misleading users. Publishers should not promote prizes, monies, or monetary equivalents in exchange for +1 Button clicks. For the avoidance of doubt, Publishers can direct users to the +1 Button to enable content and functionality for users and their social connections. When Publishers direct users to the +1 Button, the +1 action must be related to the Publishers’ content and the content or functionality must be available for both the visitor and their social connections.

It seems perfectly clear that they allow publishers (that’s me) to direct users to the +1 button, so long as we don’t offer prizes, mislead the purpose, and it is about our content. In the case of this blog post, we meet the TOS with no issues.

A company with a motto of ‘Don’t be evil’ is almost guaranteed to be evil in some ways! Obviously ‘evil’ is subjective – psychopaths don’t believe they are evil, they can often believe they are righteous. Most other people will disagree! For business reasons Google will record everything you do on the web, but as ‘good citizens’ they will pass this information on to authorities if asked. I have no idea if Chrome or Android does the same.

They belive in AGW so it is ‘reasonable’ to downgrade any opponenets. ‘climaterealists.com’ found this out a month or so ago. A search of ‘climate realists’ on Google had them in the top spot – overnight they were down to page 5 [when I checked]. If this site was ‘What’s up with that’ I suspect it would be similarly downgraded – use unique words for a web name!

In Europe Google gained notoriety when it was discovered that while their cars were photographing street scenes they were also checking all the wifi connections and recorded unsecured ones! They claimed it was innocent but why on earth would they do that?

Further afield, it was discovered that iphones stored all the phone’s movements [and presumably yours] for up to a year. Again it was declared as an innocent feature, but why do it in the first place. Android does the same but on a limited scale – the last 50 mobile masts and 200 wifi networks.

While all these may be done for innocent reasons, and most people have nothing to hide, it is still creepy to have your life monitored. Also, once collected it can fall in to the hands of less innocent people. It strikes me that a lot of this information is exactly what the US government would want.

Even when people mean well they may decide ‘for your own good’ to change or limit things. For example the co-founder of Wikipedia was being interviewed on the BBC about his fight with the Chinese authorities, complaining that they wanted to censor and remove items that they disagreed with, yet this hypocrite was doing exactly the same thing on Wikipedia when it came to skeptical views on Global Warming.

Dominant businesses run by idealists can be a problem when it comes to dealing with people with different ideals or outlooks, and it must be a constant temptation to try and ‘push’ these people towards their own idealogy ‘for their own good’.

Google is playing games with their most valuable asset.
They did the same to Climate Realists not long ago – see link. Google seems to want to be remembered as fudging the numbers pro-AGW and manipulate search.
It is not what made Google great once. Google became great as they understood to apply the democracy in the web – let the web chose what is best and serve with best information. I do not need a nanny who tells me what is good for me.http://climaterealists.com/?id=8416

To rank better in the more generic search keys such as “global warming” “climate change” “green house effect” etc. It would be beneficial if some of those terms were included in article titles or the opening paragraph of articles.

To some extent the low ranking of WUWT on the most generic search keys might be a self inflicted wound due to the conversational, and sometimes “cute” titles given to many submissions.

I think you are being victimized by the very fact that you avoid those sensational “buzz words” which new comers might search for if they have questions about global warming etc.

I agree. And using descriptive names would be helpful for people browsing the archives.

“As has been found recently, Google has staff of people who actively downrate websites based on a number of factors, one of which is according to reports, to downgrade sites that don’t agree with the “consensus” about AGW, or which allow for a diversity of views on the topic.”

No link, no evidence, lots of vague handwaving about google searches which few people here seem to understand the mechanics behind.

Expect to see more of this sort of thing. The warmists have two options when the next several decades of increasing cold (probably starting this winter) result in ever more resistance to the idea of warming. They can admit that CO2 has a lot less effect than they are claiming, yeah, right, or they can start to take actions to silence dissent. I expect to see a ramp up of all kinds of direct and indirect censorship and attacks on skeptics which will go up in direct contrast to the temperature, the colder it gets, the more attacks. And the more the warmist agenda manages to give government greater powers, and the more those powers harm the economy and peoples lives, the greater will be the need for control of “dissent”. So if it starts to get really cold, and the warmists blame it on “extreme weather” caused by CO2, and use that excuse to gain harmful control of the economy and start to really hurt people who are already harmed by the cold (which we are not allowed to prepare for since we are not allowed to admit it might get cold as CO2 goes up), there may be a great need by our “great leaders” to silence dissent.

Mike Lorrey, in the second paragraph of this post: “As has been found recently, Google has staff of people who actively downrate websites based on a number of factors, one of which is according to reports, to downgrade sites that don’t agree with the “consensus” about AGW, or which allow for a diversity of views on the topic.”

Like any good scientist or journalist, please cite a reference or source. Please.

Unsupported phrases such as “as has been found” and “according to reports” are but vague hearsay.

the above was only half snark.
I do see the +1 thingy at the top in other places. My guess is that it is probably there to make it easier for staff (and faithful) to go and mark everything up for the Google ranking.

There are also service companies that will (for a fee) go to your site daily up your ranking on the Google search. I have an old acquaintance that has several PC’s (several hundred IIUC) that via script give his clients multitudes of hits each day. my guess is that it brings in extra ad revenue and improves their traffic rankings so they can charge more for the ads they run.

Shady? yes. Effective? don’t know, but he seems to be since he gets paid.

Google Wades Into Global Warming Debate
By John Brandon
Published April 05, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Google is diving headfirst into the climate-change debate with a “21 Club” of hand-picked experts that the search engine giant hopes will drive the conversation — and guide investments — in climate change.

But it’s a discussion that even the club’s members say is meant to be one-sided.

“If Google included people who challenged that debate, they would be wrong to do so,” said Matthew Nisbet, an associate professor for the School of Communication at American University and one of the 21 Google Science Communication Fellows.

“As to whether climate change is happening, humans are a cause and it is a problem — there is no scientific debate over that,” Nisbet told FoxNews.com.

A review of the 21 Club confirms Nisbet’s comment. The group includes meteorologists, communication specialists, and even weather forecasters, as well as few scientists who research climate change for a living. None argue that the planet isn’t in imminent danger.
(…)

You may now deploy the “That’s just Fox, they’re biased” non-defense non-rebuttal, suitable if you plan to blow off the article’s linked references, ignoring the implications outlined in the “Follow the money” section.

BTW, this was found by Googling “google search climate change” and is in the first page of results. But that could be just for me. Picked up by Reuters, there’s a October 31 2011 CleanTechnica post titled “How Google is Making the Climate War Worse.” Basically, by tailoring search results to give you stuff similar to what you’ve seen before, Google is harming Climate Science™ by giving skeptical searchers even more skeptical-slanted results. As implied, this may be related to the complaints of Climate Scientists™ being unable to “communicate effectively” especially with climate skeptics, as Google isn’t showing them the best gee-whiz most recent and “thoroughly convincing” Climate Science™ results.

Personally I think Climate Scientists™ are just bad snake oil salesmen who only sell well to those who are pre-brainwashed by the assorted education systems and require government mandates demanded by socialist-leaning politicians to enact “change” or to even get further research funding for their claims that are revealed as yet continue to grow ever-more preposterous, but that’s just me.

FWIIW, when I Bing something (I don’t use google of anything but spam traps (gmail) and maps (have not found anybody with better maps on-line) I read through the “Founds” until I get past the obvious plants, then go to the next page and look for something that might be what I was searching for.

For a site otherwise ran by intelligent people with a healthy sense of skeptism regarding the ‘official’ line, it’s disconcerting just how far off the mark they can be. There are no links to back up claims of anthropogenic search bias (!) but there is plenty of evidence that a significant majority of commenting followers of this blog are not as skeptical or enlightened as they should be.

(If you sift through all the comments you’ll find two or three that offer good and rational explanations, somewhat beyond the ‘Google are evil’ rants of many others).

And just for a little balance, a quick google [google rank agw] to try and research this matter yielded this article:

not to reiterate what everyone has said, but it seems internet is just making people more accountable lol… as a teacher I have to be careful of that anyway… so when I first caught on to the google plus… I deleted it… Now, I have this blog… I like to be honest…I wish I could be accountable and keep my public job…but the two don’t mesh well for all case scenarios…hmmm

Dear Moderators,
Normally I’d just wait it out until the rescue, but I’m curious. What trip-word(s) consigned my last post to the spam bucket?

[Reply: WordPress has its own list of words that automatically place a comment in the Spam folder. One or more links may also do it. WP doesn’t tell us what the words are, but “Nazi” and “fraud” are among them. ~dbs, mod.]

So did I a couple of years ago (and haven’t used Google since). However, Bing is run by Microsoft, so that’s not a big improvement over Google. I’ve switched to dogpile (no joke)… Try it here: http://www.dogpile.com

It does a fair job and I’m happy to not patronize either Google or Bing.

I don’t know if this will help but I will search WUWT using yahoo and connect via that route rather than using google bookmarks.

It has been stated above that many of us here have WUWT bookmarked and get here that way. It looks like WUWT will cross the ONE MILLION (1,000,000) hit mark by the new year (2012). That is due ‘kudos’ by any measure for a blog of this nature, and in about 4 years time (hope I got the time right)!

Has it occurred to anybody that the same business ethics that landed Microsoft in the hot water of Anti-Trust might be inflating their search results counter by 5x just to impress those who are easily impressed by big numbers. Well has it?

“downgrade sites that don’t agree with the consensus” Wow, given the very powerful natural monopoly that Google enjoys and the resulting influence it has over people, this is extremely disturbing and is my worst fear.

For a smoking gun the Google document doesn’t add much to the case. Firstly if Google wanted to intentionally rank WUWT lower it could do so using less complicated means than the kind of QA process described – remember THEY control their own code, their own algorithms.
Secondly so far nobody has shown that there is anything remotely odd about WUWT ranking in a search. The underlying algorithm counts linkages – ranks aren’t on straight popularity but on the extent other websites link to a site (and then those links are weighted by the ranking of that site and so on).
Think about, say, The Guardian. Is it more likely that the Guradian would have an article linking to WUWT or is the opposite more likely to be the case? Clealry it is far more likely WUWT will have a blog post linking to an article in a major news site. Consequently WUWT is the sort of site that links more to other places than a site that major websites link to. Naturally it will have substantially lower ranking.
As I explained above – just select BLOGS on the side bar of a Google search result. WUWT will then have a high page ranking because major news sites and government agencies (such as the EPA) won’t be included.

Secondly so far nobody has shown that there is anything remotely odd about WUWT ranking in a search. The underlying algorithm counts linkages – ranks aren’t on straight popularity but on the extent other websites link to a site (and then those links are weighted by the ranking of that site and so on).

Outdated info. I found this article (merely one I still have up, echoes many others like they’re all parroting a press release) about Google’s recent changes to weed out “low quality” sites, contains this info:

(…)
When Google’s search engine was first introduced, in 1998, its primary advantage was that it considered the number of times other sites linked to a certain page, weighing those links as though they were endorsements. But as people quickly learned how to manipulate those links, Google’s search began focusing more heavily on other factors, too. Google has punished e-commerce sites, including J. C. Penney, for inflating its rankings by paying for links from unrelated sites.
(…)

Google has learned to largely ignore links, as people figured out how to use them to game the system, and has found other metrics to provide what they find to be better results.

Using a common SEO tool (SEOQuake) to analyze both WUWT and SkS home pages, an obvious problem shows up that may be affecting the organic page ranking of WUWT: the actual keyword phrase of ‘global warming.’

The SkS site has the keyword phrases “global warming” and “global warming skepticism” identified multiple repeat times by SEOQuake. For WUWT? Zero identified by SEOQuake.

This is an SEO issue for the WUWT and best remedied by utilizing an SEO expert to help with the site’s organic rankings.

Once the obvious keyword problem is corrected, the WUWT site should naturally rank ahead of SkS simply due to huge number of external links to WUWT site (WUWT has 555k ‘backlinks’ to its site, SkS only has a measly 6k). Of course, if your site still ranks well below SkS after fixing the keyword issue then Google has some real ‘splainin to do.

I’m grateful to CE for his assurance.
I use Gmail, Google for search, Google documents, Google maps, and (very frequently) Google news. I love the cpmpany. They’ve given me what I regard as thousands of dollars worth of value, for free.
I’m sorry so many people here have expressed dislike for the company. I want to speak in its favour.
If Google’s algorithms are failing to highly rank a site as keenly sought and significant as WUWT, in the topics that WUWT addresses, then it’s utterly astonishing, and it reflects badly on those algorithms. I’m conscious that I appear to be a hypocrite when I propose that putting WUWT down the ranking is a bad thing but putting it up the ranking is a good thing. I don’t think I am hypocritical; an algorithm tweak that correctly identifies the relevance of this site to the topics it addresses would undoubtedly be useful for other sites on other issues. And of course for giving me what I am searching for.

“Outdated info. I found this article (merely one I still have up, echoes many others like they’re all parroting a press release) about Google’s recent changes to weed out “low quality” sites, contains this info:”
My point was that without intentional adjustments we would still expect WUWT to rank low on generic search terms like “climate change”. Does Google use more than just links? Yes – but nothing that would suggest that WUWT would rank higher. The objection seems to be, on deeper analysis, not that WUWT is intentionally ranked lower than it should be (should be compared with what?) but that Google aren’t adjusting it higher.

“f Google’s algorithms are failing to highly rank a site as keenly sought and significant as WUWT, in the topics that WUWT addresses, then it’s utterly astonishing, and it reflects badly on those algorithms.”
Keenly sought? Somebody actually looking for WUWT will find it very quickly with Google. A search term like “Anthony Watts” takes you straight to WUWT (as does “antony watts”).
The issue appears to be whether people typing ina generic search term are directed to WUWT. As yet nobody has given a reason why WUWT should rank highly for such terms.

NyqOnly,
I think it’s great that you think Google is great. I use Google, because the results always seem to be more useful than any other product. I also use gmail. But….I assume that Google is doing what I would consider bad things with my email. This is the Google that refused to cooperate with the FBI on tracking down kiddie porn searchers, but had no problem helping China keep track of who googles ‘democracy’. I use their products, but, make no mistake, they are evil, evil people. To assume that they are ‘doing the right thing’ displays an incredible degree of trust in an organization pretty obviously not trustworthy.

Seems an investigation into this matter is in order. Is this censorship in process?

Any investigative journalists out there?

How can a web site voted “Best Science Blog” and with large traffic be wiped from the world’s number one search engine’s results of a company running the largest search engine without members of the board of directors and management of that said company, “Google” corporation, be aware, or forbid, even ordering, such distortion in “the world’s information” as Google itself terms it’s control over said “world’s information”. Conflict-of-interest has been said to exist within it’s board of directors who can so easily manipulate such control over thoughts and markets.

It is clear by looking at the results from the front pages that that results are being replaced with pages from sites of opposing views and a small fraction of the traffic. Something does seem amiss.

I just think someone should look deeper into this, not merely pushing Google’s own “+1” button. As a commentator above correctly pointed out, that this is everyone’s “worst nightmare” if we let it occur. Silence of a minority is bad of coarse but the silencing of the majority can never be tolerated.

I am shocked by this revelation. As a consequence, I have changed the default search engine for all of the computers in my reach to Bing. I am promoting this change at my office, colleagues, wherever I can. So far with good results.

I tried to join so I could vote but apparently “William Mason” is an unacceptable name to use. It says it violates their naming policy. Really!? Really? I smell funny business. Then when I want to complain it wants the home link to the profile that they won’t let me make. How neat as that. Wish I could help but……

Lucy, the problem isn’t search results for “WUWT” or “Watts Up”, because people that know about us can already find us. The problem is for people searching for information on “global warming” or “climate change” or other such terms, our site shows up so low that it might as well not be ranked.

As for Mr. CE, a commenter who claimed to be employed by Google and decried our “conspiracy theories”: I emailed you more than a day ago to discuss this issue with you, but you haven’t responded, however I find it odd that you claim to be a Google employee but are using a Yahoo email address…. Please respond to my email if you are who you say you are and wish to discuss this topic… We would love to learn more about why our site seems to be so badly downrated… thanks…

Mike Lorrey says: November 8, 2011 at 11:01 pm “Lucy, the problem isn’t search results for “WUWT” or “Watts Up”, because people that know about us can already find us. The problem is for people searching for information on “global warming” or “climate change” or other such terms, our site shows up so low that it might as well not be ranked.”
But as yet nobody has given a substantial reason why it should be ranked higher. For somebody looking for general information about global warming WUWT isn’t a great starting place. Roy Spencer’s blog, for example, at least has some broad introductory sections on global warming as well as introductions to his alternative view. WUWT posts require some familiarity with on-going issues. For somebody looking for a general introduction RealClimate, Lucia’s Blackboard or ClimateAudit or Science-of-Doom are awful places to start – not because of any particular fault with those sites but because you already need to know a lot to follow the discussions.

NyqOnly,
WUWT is highly regarded by many, for its surfacestations.org project, for exposing climategate, among quite a number of other things, beyond it being the very highest traffic climate blog, and ranked number 1 science blog by a number of organizations for several years. So your claims are rather specious. If it wasn’t for WUWT, BEST would never even have happened.

Mike Lorrey says: November 9, 2011 at 4:20 am
“WUWT is highly regarded by many, for its surfacestations.org project, for exposing climategate, among quite a number of other things, beyond it being the very highest traffic climate blog, and ranked number 1 science blog by a number of organizations for several years.”
And?
Being highly regarded or even having some influence on major events doesn’t mean a site should have a high ranking. The attitude through these comments seems to be one of WUWT somehow deserving a high ranking simply because the poster thinks the site is spiffy.
As for “Climategate” WUWT crops up FOURTH on a Google search of that term. Far from being vanished by an evil Google coproration, WUWT is right there in the first few links that anybody sees (it gets beaten by Wikipedia, the Daily Telegraph and the Climategate.com site). For a conspiracy to supress WUWT you’d have thought Google would be wanting WUWT to be particulalry hidden when it comes to Climategate! In reality it actually ends up ranked higher than the Guardian, Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post.
Traffic? Think about it – traffic isn’t going to be a great basis for ranking web searches. Facebook gets a lot of traffic (vast amounts) but for many search terms Facebook is irrelevant or weak. And not if you want traffic to be the metric then you are saying WUWT should be ranked LOWER than i currently is on the search term “Climategate”.
Thinking about it WUWT high ranking for “climategate” explains much of the decline cited above. When search traffic on climategate was high, WUWT would have got many paper visiting via a Google search. As that traffic has declined so fewer people have found WUWT.

Going back to the Alexa graph provided in the main article. You will note to major drop-offs in traffic coming from searches to WUWT. There is a high in late 2009 which then declines into early 2010. There is then a slow increase reaching a moderate peak in mid 2010. After that there is another sharp decline.
How does that compare with “Climategate”. Late 2009 the story breaks (and hence WUWT gets lots of hits, as the site is a major source on the issue and many other sites link to WUWT on the issue). After the initial excitment the traffic dies down a bit but as various inquiries get under way interest remains. Mid 2010 various inquiries start reporting back on their invetsigations – the inquiries largely through cold water on the scandal (or, if you prefer, whitewash it). More or less around that time WUWT gets the other sharp drop in the Alexa graph.
So rather than Google supressing WUWT the actual issue has been Google PROMOTING WUWT as a top link on the issue of “climategate”. As this search term was a major source of traffic to WUWT, as interest in the topic has declined so has search-engine referals to WUWT.

If creating a useful search engine weren’t such an enormous and expensive undertaking, I’d start one myself! I have caught Google in at least some very slight/subtle political biases. I remember after Obama’s election, there was a link to interact with the White House – I think for suggestions/discussion. I can’t imagine them being so eager to to help (and for Google to alter their trademark barebones search homepage) if a Republican or Libertarian had just been elected president. I can imagine Google subtlely biasing against political camps by determining the language/attitude, authoritativeness or “truthfulness” of various genres of websites. Might they downgrade non-leftist-cult sites as “hate sites” in the future (behind the scenes, in their black box)?

NyqOnly,
The answer is that Google insiders are able to downrate a site on specific search terms. This is to prevent spam sites from using popular search terms that are irrelevant to their sites from ranking highly. No sane person can dispute that “global warming” isn’t highly relevant to WUWT, ergo, it is clearly being gamed by insiders.

Mike Lorrey says: November 10, 2011 at 1:40 am
“No sane person can dispute that “global warming” isn’t highly relevant to WUWT, ergo, it is clearly being gamed by insiders.”
And? ‘global warming’ is highly relevant to many, many websites. The question is why WUWT should appear HIGHER in those ranking compared with other websites ALSO about global warming.
Secondly there ZERO evidence that WUWT has ranked lower on search terms such as ‘global warming’ than it has in the past.
Thirdly WUWT ranks very highly on other search terms – notably ‘climategate’. If Google was actively trying to supress WUWT then it would make far more sense for them to target a search term like ‘climategate’.
Fourthly the high ranking of WUWT on ‘climategate’ wholly explains the Alexa stats quoted above. The referals from search engines show big drops around the same time as big drops on searches generally, on ‘climategate’
Fifthly a quick examination of WUWT shows several design issues which means it is likely to be ranked highly on ‘climategate’ but not highly on ‘global warming’ or ‘cliamte change’. Look at the site navigation bar below the masthead: “Climategate” is featured and will refer you to a special page – ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ aren’t. Looks more like WUWT is being down ranked by robots! Rather than make some fairly easy site improvements we’ve got a bizarre conspiracy/persecution fantasy.
Sixthly on broad terms like ‘climate change’ OBVIOUSLY major websites like government agencies, major news organisations and Wikipedia are going to dominate the hits. As I explained earlier if Google was just sticking with the basic pagerank algorithm we’d still expect to see WUWT low. WUWT position is consistent with where we would expect it to be if its rank was untouched by human hands. A behemoth like the World Health Organisation doesn’t appear until page 6 on a google search of ‘climate change’ for example.
Seventhly things like web awards or popularity are being cited as reasons why WUWT should have a higher ranking – but neither of those are typical factors in a search engine ranking. Yet even if we do take that into account does anybody actually think this site is bigger than NASA or even the Financial Times? On generic search temrs like ‘climate change’ WUWT is a small fish in a very big pond and is competing for attention not just with other climate blogs (eg Real Climate or Climate Audit) but with EVERY NEW ORGANISATION ON THE WEB.
8thly lots of blogs around the issue of global warming. Try ‘global warming’ as a search term (no quotes). When the results page comes up go to the sidebar and pick ‘blogs’ rather than ‘Everything’. Top hit? Roy Spencer’s blog. First page is actually dominated by blogs that challenge the ‘consensus’ position. Yeah WUWT could be higher but that just demonstrates point 5 above – WUWT could be higher relative to other ‘skeptical’ blogs. Makes no sense to assume that Google is busy down rating WUWT but not Roy Spencer, Climate Depot or Minnesotan’s for Global Warming.

In short 1. no evidence that WUWT has been down ranked on search terms like ‘global warming” 2. its ranking is consistent with what we know about page ranks and this site’s design 3. any decline in referals is wholly explained by a decline in searches on ‘climategate’

Sorry – meant to say “WUWT is a small fish in a very big pond and is competing for attention not just with other climate blogs (eg Real Climate or Climate Audit) but with EVERY NEWS ORGANISATION ON THE WEB.” not “NEW ORGANISATION”